


Worth The Hassle

by mystery_deer



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: -chefs kiss- god I love projecting onto fictional characters, Coming Out, Flashbacks, Gender Dysphoria, Greg is a Good Boyfriend, Light Angst, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Mycroft Holmes, Other, mycroft is nonbinary and it IS the focus of the fic this time, trans mycroft holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 13:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20359015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystery_deer/pseuds/mystery_deer
Summary: Mycroft decides to tell Greg about his gender identity.





	Worth The Hassle

Even after dating for half a year it was still a shock to come home to someone. Especially when that someone was Greg Lestrade and the football match was on.

Mycroft stood outside the door to the apartment he’d told his boyfriend was his (It was one of many apartments he owned and lived in but it was less complicated this way) and listened to what was unmistakably some sort of sports chant. He contemplated turning and finding somewhere else to sleep, a park bench or on the rails of a train track for instance but then he remembered how much he loved Greg. 

And that he’d been looking forward to a particular slice of cake that he was sure would be eaten if he didn’t hurry. And so he unlocked the door and squinted as a wall of sound hit him. 

“Oh, hey Myc!”  
“Why?” Greg looked confused and raised a beer bottle.  
“It’s the final game!”  
“Goodie. Turn it down please.” 

To his relief the volume was turned down as Mycroft dropped his bags and made a beeline for the kitchen, slamming the slice of cake down onto a plate as if it were a drink after a long day.  
“What you don’t like the game~?” Came Greg’s voice, teasing and sing songy in that way it got when he was in the mood to poke and prod.

“You know I don’t.” He replied, taking his plate over to the living room and sitting down next to his boyfriend on the couch. 

“Can’t believe you don’t like football. My family’s gonna kill me.”  
“Ah, is it a cardinal sin in your neck of the woods?” Asked Mycroft, feeling his heart warm at the implication that Gregory wanted to introduce him to his family. 

“Yep, every bloke played football and if they couldn’t they at least watched it. Some of the girls too but it didn’t matter as much you know?”

“Hm. I’ve never much cared for it.”  
“Football? Yeah, I can’t really imagine you and Sherlock kicking anything around the back garden.”  
“Oh no our mother would have skinned us alive if we’d damaged her garden. I was speaking about being a man however.”

“You know I said bloke.” Greg teased before realizing what was said. “What do you mean by that?”

Mycroft watched as the television cut to a commercial about a housewife and mother of two trying desperately to clean the carpets in her house. It was suddenly extremely interesting.

“Myc- Mycroft?” Greg asked, stumbling towards the full name hesitantly. Mycroft sectioned off a portion of his cake and ate it without answering, straightening everything in his head. He didn’t usually come out in such a cavalier manner. He didn’t usually come out at all. 

He’d always been fine with people assuming what they wanted, as long as it was what he wanted them to assume. 

Growing up he knew he wanted something different, he dreaded the thought of his body morphing into his mother’s. 

He recalled one particular instance when he went to his father about this worry. Mycroft had sat in the chair opposite his father’s large desk. The man himself looked big, powerful and commanding. Even the air around him stilled and paused to let him settle in.

He had long since forgotten the words but the feelings that they stirred in him remained to this day. A deep, unsettling sense of unbelonging. Of wrongness. He had written in his journal that he'd felt like a prisoner being led to the electric chair by talk of last meals and promises of heaven. Though it was a bit melodramatic he agreed with the gist of his past self's assessment. 

After leaving his father’s office he’d been confronted by the portrait of his mother hanging on the wall outside it. She looked gorgeous, ethereal and severe like an angel from old testament. 

He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to walk into a room and have everyone look at him the way they looked at his mother. He didn’t want anyone to see his body as anything more than a vessel for the mind, and though he knew his mother was smarter than almost anyone he also knew she had to fight to be seen as such. He’d witnessed it. He wanted no part of it.

In high school he was already teased for his intellect and poor social skills, when he began to develop all hell broke loose.  
He loathed when boys would approach him, unsure which brand of hostility he’d have to endure. 

One day in the summer he remembered he was running as if for his life. His feet hit the pavement hard, his mary janes not built for being slammed against concrete. He ran until he was home and could crawl up the stairs to the bathroom and shut the door against Sherlock, who as usual pounced on him the minute his presence was sensed.

He cut his hair as Bobby Fletcher’s voice clanged around the bathroom like change in an empty pipe.  
“She’s so fucking mouthy but I’d shut her up, guaranteed.”  
That first haircut was unprofessional and wild and extremely unflattering but there was nothing feminine about it. And nothing feminine could be done about it no matter how hard his mother tried. 

By the time he was out of college he passed as male frequently enough that if he was referred to as anything else they were corrected. He was climbing his way up the government ladder swiftly and with relative ease. No one had to know he was anything but what he appeared to be.

The discomfort sunk in around the time Sherlock was in college, discovering drugs and mysteries and writing to Mycroft about them both. 

He remembered the time because he recalled receiving both a letter and a dress in the mail. The dress was a dark scarlet and he wore it with a faux fur wrap around. When he saw himself in the mirror his stomach dropped and he was walking on air. That sickening mix of dread, confusion, elation. He knew. 

He didn’t look anything like his mother in a dress, just as he didn’t look anything like his father in a suit. He didn’t want to look like either of them, didn’t want to be either of them. 

He wasn’t either of them.  
Wasn’t either.

“I still use he/him pronouns.” Mycroft said, coming back to himself. Back to the apartment, Gregory.  
He felt that fear coming back and he hated it, hated the feeling of vulnerability. “I just don’t have any particular attachment to what those pronouns typically imply.” He ate another section of his cake and hoped that the sweetness would erase the nervousness in his voice. 

“But- I’ve...fuck I’ve been like calling you my boyfriend this whole time.”  
“I didn’t tell you to refer to me as anything else.”  
“Still.” 

Mycroft looked over at Gregory, who was now sitting and scratching at his beard in thought, eyebrows furrowed. Gregory was a man who valued others, who wanted to do right by people and was devastated when he did wrong even if he couldn’t have possibly prevented it. Mycroft loved this about him, just as he quietly loved everything about the man. 

He loved him. And, he realized, Gregory loved him as well. 

“I’m not out, I may never be. I’m perfectly content to be perceived as male. I am most definitely not anything close to a woman after all.”  
“You love your secrets huh?” Greg sighed.  
“I don’t need the hassle. I use traditionally male pronouns and am fine with the gendered terms that go with that.”  
“Even though you told me?”  
“Yes.” 

They sat in silence for a moment before Mycroft felt Greg lean in and kiss his cheek, a surprisingly chaste display of affection that led him to turn his head and be swept up into a more typical kiss from his boyfriend. His heart swelled.

“You taste like sugar all the time you know.”  
“Smoking is a nasty habit.” Mycroft warned, taking the last bite of his cake. “I can taste it even through your gum.”

Greg chuckled before his expression melted back into something lovesick and soft. “You really trust me huh?”

Mycroft paused before moving his gaze back to the television. “Yes I do. I hope it won’t prove to be...misplaced.”

“I promise it won’t be.” 

Gregory had a particular and infuriating way of sounding like the most sincere man on earth and also a lost puppy dog. What else could Mycroft do besides abandon all else and throw his arms around the man, kissing him until the television shouted out to them that the football match was back on?

**Author's Note:**

> Cute gender neutral things to call your partner: Mycroft Holmes


End file.
